Unstable
by The Phantom of the Death Star
Summary: Based on a true story, sadly. Feel free to doubt my sanity. Hojo starts talking in my head when I can't finish my math homework and even the power of the Jedi can't help me...


**Unstable**

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**lacking**** emotional or psychological stability: **lacking, or resulting from a lack of, emotional control or psychological stability

**subject**** to spontaneous change: **describes a particle that is subject to spontaneous change such as radioactive decay

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Microsoft® Encarta® 2006. © 1993-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Everything else belongs to Square Enix, George Lucas, J.K. Rowling and my science teacher.

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People who actually like Hojo, leave now.

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I was not happy. I wanted to scream, but unfortunately the clock read 1:16 at night and the rest of my family was asleep. Screaming, however tempting, was utterly out of the question.

_"It would do no good either way…"_

I shivered. There was a voice in my head, another consciousness intruding upon my own. It would have been so much better if it was any one but the person it was. Professor Hojo of Shinra's Biochemical Research Department had infiltrated my mind.

_"So what are you planning to do about it?"_

"Shaddap, pessimist," I snarled out loud.

_"Watch your language."_

"You aren't my mother, you #$#$."

_"…I refuse to speak to anyone using such crude vernacular."_

"Then why are you still talking?" With an evil thought and a sadistic, deranged smile I withdrew into the Mental Plain.

My Mental Plain was an interesting place. It carried the faint air of an insane asylum, but without padded walls. Anything I imagined would come into figurative being the moment I thought of it. There was nothing there I could not control except…

_"So, you've finally come to visit."_

"By Bahamut's feathers, I hate your voice…" I conjured a creatively cursing Cid Highwind by way of a distraction and an annoyance. Sixty seconds later I was bored and Cid disappeared again. Unfortunately, Hojo didn't.

_"You are aware that you are actually supposed to be achieving something here?"_

"Quit nagging, mother," I snapped in my most Kadaj-ish voice, logging in to fanfiction dot net.I was supposed to be doing Math homework, but _something_ kept distracting me. After five minutes of being asked repeatedly why I even cared, I logged off.

"Fine," I said aloud, "You wanna get on my bad side?" I returned to the Mental Plain and glowered down at the scientist. (I had made my mental projection several inches taller than I actually was.)

He looked back at me, equal dislike in our expressions.

"Why can't you just leave?" I asked in the most vicious voice I could imagine.

_"I will only leave when given the proper incentive."_

Shiva and Ifrit, give me patience. I sat on the nonexistent floor, resisting the urge to conjure several large knives and stab him with them. I'd already tried that, it didn't work. Closing my projected eyes and searching within myself for a shred of peace, I attempted to ignore the hated voice asking what, exactly, I was trying to do. I was trying to think of someone—anyone—who could out-intellect Hojo by several light-years.

I looked up into two large, green pools of wisdom.

"Jedi Master Yoda," I addressed the small, green Muppet hovering before me, ignoring an exclamation of _"__W__hat _is_ that__ thing__?!"_ from the other side of the room. "I believe the situation is clear to you, have you any counsel to give, Master?"

Yoda gave Hojo one of those scary looks, the kind that makes you remember his fight with Count Dooku. "Joined the Dark Side, this one has," Yoda declared in a tone no sane person would argue against.

_"What?"_Hojo exclaimed, earning him another Jedi-glare, which he ignored, _"I've never heard of the 'Dark Side' let alone join it!"_

"They have cookies," I informed him.

This time the glare was for me. "Speak so lightly of crunchy, circular, pastries, you should not."

"Um… okay. So how do I get rid of the maniac?"

"Unhealthy, these visions are. More sleep you need, hmm? Yes. Sleep. Complete your task, you must."

Fancy backwards-talk for "Do your homework." I sighed, and made imaginary Yoda disappear. Hojo seemed mildly disgusted, giving the patch of non-space where Yoda had been a wary look as though about to say something.

I cut him off. "Time for a different approach."

Two figures appeared on the nonexistent plane I was observing. One was clad in all black, a hood pulled over his head hiding yellowed horns, but his face exemplifying the zebra paradox of red-on-black-or-black-on-red. The other was dressed in muted browns with a softened look around him, his hair long and partially tied back. The two new guests were Darth Maul and Qui-Gon Jinn.

I looked pleadingly at my two favorite Star Wars characters and made a despairing motion towards Hojo. "Help, please."

Maul seemed happy to help me as long as it involved killing. The agile Sith Lord leapt across the space between himself and the scientist, double ended lightsaber swooshing, ready to kill instantly.

Qui-Gon looked at his murderer with a mildly worried expression. I made a move as if to warn against the action, knowing the outcome.

Hojo defended himself invisibly, his existence as a separate entity overruling the powerful, yet imaginary, Darth Maul. The blade of the lightsaber bent, then shattered, shards of red light and hunks of metal dissolving in the air.

Maul looked like a baby who had just had his favorite toy's head violently ripped off.

"You probably shouldn't have done that," Qui-Gon told the sulking villain. Maul replied with a childish pout, very out of place on his war-painted face.

"I think he's mentally degenerating," I whispered to the Jedi, who agreed with a nod.

Maul sat down dejected at Qui-Gon's feet, throwing ugly glares at Hojo periodically. Qui-Gon patted him on the head, carefully avoiding horns, oblivious to the fact that the morose Sith would one day kill him.

"So," Qui-Gon said, attempting to re-rail the conversation, "you summoned us for a reason?"

"Uh… yah, pest control." Hojo looked mildly offended. "I need you to tell me how to get rid of the diabolical freak. Now."

Qui-Gon shook his head, "I'm sorry, but I agree with Master Yoda on this issue, you need sleep, and the only way to do that is to improve your work ethic." He looked serious.

I glowered, but then I had a brilliant idea. "If you don't tell me how to get him out of my head _now_," I threatened, softening my voice to a hiss, "I will show the Jedi council _that picture_."

"What picture?" Hojo and Maul asked in unison, looking at Qui-Gon.

The Jedi attempted to stare me down. "You wouldn't."

I grinned cruelly. "I would, and you know it."

Qui-Gon paled visibly.

"So?"

"I would tell you, but I can't give you any more advice than myself and Master Yoda already have…"

I was sick of Star Wars characters anyway.

Qui-Gon and Darth Maul were gone.

I threw a zebra at him, but he made it disappear. I summoned a kitten to play with, but he shot it. I created a Lego fortress for myself and attacked him with a legion of snails.

"_This is getting ridiculous…_" he said, edging away from a charging snail.

"Ridikkulus." I waved around a katsura wood wand. Perceiving that it did nothing I returned to my snail assault, as he wasn't a boggart.

"_Really…_" He made all my snails burst into flames and my Lego fortress to crumble into plastic sand.

Now that that distraction had been thwarted, It was on to the next one… if I could think of one…

I was bored now. Bored, tired, and cold. To remedy the latter I wrapped myself in a long, slightly puffy, hooded cloak.

_"Is that a zebra?"_

"I'm actually not sure…" I pondered the black and white swirled pattern on the coat. "Probably not zebra, but certainly something similar."

_"Does that even belong to you?"_

"No…"

Before I could stop my hotwired brain, the image of a very angry, very shirtless Xemnas appeared glaring down at me. "Give that back!"

"No way!" I glared up into the orange eyes which I had come to associate with a fake-light-saber-y death. "I'm cold!"

"You're _cold_? Are you kidding? I am _not_ walking into that Final Battle without my coat!"

I looked back at Xemnas. Tight black leather pants, boots, no shirt, and silver hair. "Aww, 'cmon Mansex! The shirtless is a fashion statement! All the _coolest_ Main Antagonists fight shirtless, think about it." I summoned an image of the character as I mentioned them, "The Great Sephiroth, Weiss the Immaculate… heck, even your Heartless, Ansem, ditched his coat."

"Ansem was a deluded idiot who wore a coat made of fifty percent aluminum foil."

"You wear a zebra," I pointed out.

Xemnas glowered. "Fine. Point taken."

Xemnas disappeared. Hojo looked afraid of me.

"What?"

"_Has it not occurred to you that you are insane?"_

"Many times. Especially tonight. Why?"

"_You just virtually won an argument against yourself."_

"True. And now I am going to stop an argument with you." I threw the first random thing I could think of at him, which happened to be the square root of pi.

It took Hojo several minutes to disentangle his lab coat from the undulating radical. I worked on the math in the mean time.

"_Why did you have to do that?_" I threw a mole at him, just to see how he'd react. Unfortunately I threw it in scientific notation so he was able to comprehend the number of zeros.

I was about to try throwing infinity times pi at him at the same time as the equation XX-1 as X approaches infinity, but he stopped me.

"_Why don't you quit with the number games and do what you're actually supposed to?_"

I threw what I had been planning to anyway, and I added in a poisoned volume of a sphere just for fun.

I was actually making progress on the math, so in celebration of this I attacked him with a battalion of undead, irregular, tetrahedra.

"There!" I said, dropping my pencil onto the desk, "I finished the bloody math. Now get out."

"_Fine._"

"What, it was that easy?" There was no response. He was gone. Hopefully forever, but probably only until the next late homework night…

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Sadly, almost all of this has actually happened in my head... When I don't get enough sleep or I play Dirge too much Hojo's voice will start talking in my head. It is scary.


End file.
